Tony was a prison guard at one of the prisons in NSW. He wasn’t a violent man, at first. But the other guards kept telling him what scumbags many of the prisoners were, and of the terrible things they’d done. They reminded him that his taxes were paying to feed the bastards. The Daily Telegraph told him that prisoners (presumably in other jails, because all the ones he’d seen in real life were actually pretty awful) were eating lobster and playing Playstation on their flat-screen TVs. He started to feel a bit resentful about the whole thing. And then one day as he was moving one of the prisoners to his cell, the prisoner called him something insulting. With words. From his mouth. And since it was already a bit of a physical environment, dragging another adult around and shoving him into things, it wasn’t a stretch for Brad to punch the prisoner in the mouth. The other guards laughed and said he had it coming.

After that, Brad discovered that he quite liked the feeling of power he got from assaulting prisoners. He punched, and he kicked, and he dragged, and he hurt them. And the other guards told him he was actually just meting out justice. People joking in the pub about prisoners being bashed told him that he was meting out justice. The Daily Telegraph cheering on violent assaults on prisoners told him he was meting out justice.

He did like his job “meting out justice” and feeling powerful through vicious assaults on other people in his care.

But Tony totally maintained the boundaries between his work and home life and did not in any way start to apply what he’d learned in prison in the outside world. He never ever hit his family members when he got annoyed, even though he spent his days reinforcing that it was okay to do that. No prison guard trained to feel powerful by assaulting other people ever has, at least not in any significant numbers, for all you know.

* * *

Joe was a violent thug who’d been in and out of prison for most of his life. Unlike Brad, he’d always known he liked hitting people.

And what was awesome about his time in prison is that, so long as he only brutally assaulted the people out of favour with the guards, they let him! In fact, they told him he was just meting out some “justice” to people who deserved it. Joe loved the feeling of some weaker person crumbling before his fists, and he kind of looked forward to his time in prison where when he beat people up, nobody in authority really cared. The guards didn’t tase him like the police might have. If he sent a prisoner to the hospital they made jokes and often if they caught him doing it they even cheered him on. He began to feel that basically he was quite justified in assaulting other people, and he was doing the community a service, and it didn’t really matter if he did stuff on the outside that sent him to prison because that was where people respected his particular skills.

But still, despite all that, he totally didn’t commit any more assaults when he next got out, because he’d learned that violence was wrong and he should avoid going back to prison.

* * *

Tim was not a violent thug, at least at first. He was in prison for trafficking cannabis. He had a pretty serious drug problem who’d bought some in bulk, figuring he could sell it to his other drug-using mates to pay for his habit. And in NSW they sent him to jail for it. What he learned in jail, as Joe belted him to a pulp that first week with the guards not giving a damn, was that being on the receiving end of physical violence sucks. He couldn’t rely on the prison authorities to protect him from brutal assaults, so he would have to do it himself. He spent the rest of his time in prison bulking up until he was strong enough to assault weaker prisoners. He learned the law of the jungle, how to use physical violence to exert power. He learned to like it.

But when he got out of prison he totally did not continue to rely on his recent training in thuggery. He wasn’t at all brutalised and turned into a force of anger and rage that would violently lash out at ordinary citizens when he discovered he had no employment opportunities because of his record and basically would have to return to crime to survive, but this time knowing how to hurt people. It all worked out fine.

* * *

Rupert was actually a pretty horrible person. What he liked most was raping people. Eventually he was caught and sent to prison, where he feared he would be under the authorities’ eyes twenty four hours a day and wouldn’t even get to beat anyone up, let alone rape them.

But there was good news in store for Rupert. It turned out that people were happy to turn a blind eye to his raping other people in prison so long as they were sufficiently terrible. The guards would turn a blind eye. When he caught sight of a copy of the Daily Telegraph he’d see people joking about it, suggesting that his raping of other prisoners was actually “justice”. Yeah, he thought, justice! This is great! And his victims were trapped with him. And he got to rape so many people that by the time he got out he’d discovered new and more disturbing types of sexual assaults. And why would he mind going back to prison, since it gave him more of what he wanted?

So Rupert learned his lesson that rape is one of the most serious crimes that society does not endorse in any way and once he left the prison system became a model citizen and never raped anyone again.

THE END.

]]>https://anonymouslefty.wordpress.com/2014/08/07/thatll-learn-em/feed/2JeremyBtiqgjZCQAAv8tf.jpg large#Morrisonsongshttps://anonymouslefty.wordpress.com/2014/07/07/very-little-amendment-required/
https://anonymouslefty.wordpress.com/2014/07/07/very-little-amendment-required/#commentsMon, 07 Jul 2014 01:28:00 +0000http://anonymouslefty.wordpress.com/?p=13537Continue reading →]]>Hard not to hear this Foreigner anthem about Scott Morrison whenever he pops up to do some other horrible thing to more than justify it. So few changes required it’s almost redundant amending the lyrics at all.

Cold As Ice

You’re as cold as ice
You’re willing to sacrifice their lives

You never take advice
Today they’ll pay the price
I know

I’ve seen it before
It’s happened many times
You’re closing the door
You leave the world behind
You’re digging for votes
Yet throwing away
Australia’s reputation
And someday we’ll pay

You’re as cold as ice
You’re willing to sacrifice their lives
You live in Paradise
But someday you’ll pay the price
I know

I’ve seen it before
It’s happened many times
You’re closing the door
You leave the world behind
You’re digging for votes
Yet throwing away
Australia’s reputation
And someday we’ll pay

Cold as ice, you know that you are
Cold, cold, as, as, ice, as cold as ice to them
Cold, cold, as, as, ice

Ooh, ooh, ooh, cold as, cold as ice
You’re as cold as ice
You’re as cold as ice, cold as ice, we know
You’re as cold as ice, yes we know
You’re as cold as ice, cold as ice, we know
You’re as cold as ice, oh yes we know
You’re as cold as ice, cold as ice, we know
You’re as cold as ice, oh yes we know
You’re as cold as ice, cold as ice

The Minister for Immigration, Scott Morrison, is planning to increase the stakes dramatically in deciding whether his nation should send an asylum seeker away to the dungeons and the hands of brutes.

And he wants to put a figure on the ghastly business. Yes. He’s offering an each-way bet, set a bit shy of 50-50.

Applicants for asylum on the basis of fear of torture must establish, under his proposal, that there is more than a 50 per cent probability that they will be subjected to agony or even death if returned to the country they have fled.

In short, if there is a mere 49 to 50 per cent chance of escaping being hung by one’s thumbs from meathooks while being thrashed by a length of electrical flex, that’s good enough for Mr Morrison. They can be sent to whatever fate might await them.

And I doubt you’d find many Australians happy to hold the Coalition’s front bench to that same standard. 49% chance of brutal torture or death if we put them on this plane? No, they’re not that bad. They’re not, you know, asylum seeker children.

Meanwhile, on this link there’s a video of Scott telling shattered refugees that they’ll be staying in those camps for “a very very long time” unless they voluntarily go back into danger.

If you voted for this, or worse – are intending to keep voting for this, then I have some rather unkind words for you. But they’re not as unkind as what you’re prepared to do to vulnerable people.

UPDATE: Apparently there’s been some confusion in the comments as to whether Australia really would do something like this.

6A(2) The Minister can only be satisfied that Australia has protection obligations in respect of the non citizen if the Minister considers that it is more likely than not that the non citizen will suffer significant harm if the non citizen is removed from Australia to a receiving country.

]]>https://anonymouslefty.wordpress.com/2014/06/26/49-risk-of-torture-or-death-well-make-em-take-it/feed/42JeremyBecause, for women, there’s really no such thing as the passive male gazehttps://anonymouslefty.wordpress.com/2014/05/31/because-for-women-theres-really-no-such-thing-as-the-passive-male-gaze/
https://anonymouslefty.wordpress.com/2014/05/31/because-for-women-theres-really-no-such-thing-as-the-passive-male-gaze/#commentsSat, 31 May 2014 09:06:13 +0000http://anonymouslefty.wordpress.com/?p=13530Continue reading →]]>So I had a friend who went for a walk one sunny morning this week. As he was standing waiting for the lights to change, there was what he describes as a particularly attractive young woman, in very tight jeans and a revealing top, standing in front of him with her partner. He only glanced for a moment, but he did notice her. She seemed to sense his look and, without turning around, pulled on a bulky jacket that covered down to her knees, and took her partner’s hand.

Because we live in a world where women have to fear the male gaze, because it is attached to a culture of entitlement and violence, and every stranger is Schrodinger’s rapist*. It might be lovely to live in a world where men and women could appreciate each others’ physical appearance without anyone’s discomfort. Where a stranger smiling at you could be a safely pleasant experience – but that’s not the world women live in. They live in the real world, where any male who “checks them out” could be the psycho who then hurts them. In the real world, male interest isn’t a compliment, it’s a threat.

So, stranger at the lights, my friend is sorry that his glance made you uncomfortable (assuming you didn’t just pull the jacket on because you were cold in the sun). His momentary pleasure in admiring your physical form does not outweigh the sense of discomfort you may have quite reasonably experienced from a male stranger’s notice. It was an indulgence of his own privilege, and he regrets it.

*By the time you open the box and find out, it’s too late.

]]>https://anonymouslefty.wordpress.com/2014/05/31/because-for-women-theres-really-no-such-thing-as-the-passive-male-gaze/feed/46JeremyFixer Upperhttps://anonymouslefty.wordpress.com/2014/05/29/13520/
https://anonymouslefty.wordpress.com/2014/05/29/13520/#commentsWed, 28 May 2014 23:09:21 +0000http://anonymouslefty.wordpress.com/?p=13520Continue reading →]]>OK, so Frozen is a kids’ movie – but it’s not like the messages in such things don’t have an effect that’s important to critique. And if Andrew Bolt can be published in the Herald Sun ranting about The Incredibles or Godzilla, I can damn well write something on a blog about a track I accidentally got stuck in my head.

So, while I sit here recovering from hospital with a cat perched on my shoulders (seriously, Polly, wtf), I’d just like to object to the song “Fixer Upper”.

The trolls meet Anna, and after being told she and Kristoff aren’t together, start interrogating her.

What’s the issue, dear?
Why are you holding back from such a man?

Because of course a woman must be interested in a man by default, and if she isn’t, well it’s something that needs to be “fixed”. Seriously?

But you’ll never meet a fellow who’s as
Sensitive and sweet!
So he’s a bit of a fixer-upper,
So he’s got a few flaws…

And they then proceed to try to argue her into being interested in him, with a list of silly quirks that aren’t so bad.

oh he’s a bit of a fixer-upper,
but this we’re certain of
You can fix this fixer-upper
Up with a little bit of love!

WHY IS THAT HER JOB?!

Then there’s a bit of creepy “uh oh maybe he’s one of those isolated, desperate weirdos who think they’re ‘nice guys'” stuff, to follow the “sensitive and sweet” bit earlier:

Or the way he covers
Up that he’s the honest goods?
All Trolls: He’s just a bit of a fixer-upper,
He’s got a couple of bugs
Kristoff: No I don’t!
All Trolls: His isolation is confirmation
Of his desperation for healing hugs

“The honest goods”? Yeah, women, why do you keep falling for those other JERKS!

But don’t worry, it turns out that there IS an argument that sinks in with the trolls: she’s already taken!

Kristoff: ENOUGH! She is engaged
to someone else, okay?!

(blink, blink)

Cliff: So she’s a bit of a fixer-upper

So her choice not to be interested in Kristoff didn’t count; and now her choice to be interested in someone else is up for (fairly insulting) debate:

Male Troll 4: That’s a minor thing.

Male Troll 5: Her quote ‘engagement’ is a flex arrangement.

I beg your pardon?

Male Trolls: So she’s a bit of a fixer-upper,
Her brain’s a bit betwixt
Get the fiancé out of the way and
The whole thing will be fixed.

Because she’ll have to take one of them, right?

Then it turns into some weird homilies about love that really don’t fit the conversation at all:

We’re not sayin’ you can change him,
‘Cause people don’t really change.
We’re only saying that love’s a force
That’s powerful and strange.
People make bad choices if they’re mad,
Or scared, or stressed.
Throw a little love their way.
And you’ll bring out their best.

What bad choices? The trolls don’t know who the fiancé is, let alone that he’s actually evil, so it’s weird if they mean Anna’s. And anyway, if it was Anna’s “bad choices”, the following exhortation to her doesn’t make sense. Who’s to throw “a little love” to these people apparently flat-out entitled to it?

That sounds awfully like making excuses for shit behaviour and telling young people – mainly little girls – that the way to deal with shit behaviour in a relationship is to throw more “love” at the offender and it’ll “fix” them. And if it doesn’t fix them, well it’s your fault because there’s obviously something wrong with your “love”.

Then the trolls try to marry Kristoff and Anna without bothering to ask their consent.

Honestly, trolls.

Still, it’s a very catchy tune.

Tomorrow: an anarcho-syndicalist deconstruction of “Supercalafragilisticexpialodocious”.

]]>https://anonymouslefty.wordpress.com/2014/05/29/13520/feed/5JeremyAbbott government creates interest-incurring personal debt for 1.5 million Australianshttps://anonymouslefty.wordpress.com/2014/05/25/abbott-government-creates-interest-incurring-personal-debt-for-1-5-million-australians/
https://anonymouslefty.wordpress.com/2014/05/25/abbott-government-creates-interest-incurring-personal-debt-for-1-5-million-australians/#commentsSun, 25 May 2014 12:20:02 +0000http://anonymouslefty.wordpress.com/?p=13506Continue reading →]]>Conservatives like to make a big deal about sovereign risk – the idea that if a new government is willing to change the rules after people have entered into deals with it, then people will not trust it in future, and its costs of doing business will increase.

Apparently that doesn’t matter if the people with whom it’s doing business are ordinary Australians.

The Australian Government in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s made a deal with the most recent generations of Australian students. Unlike your parents, we’ll be charging you for your degrees. Sure, we could just tax you progressively like everyone else if you make lots of money as a result of that degree, but we’re going to specifically make you pay us back for that degree itself, when your income hits an average sort of level. The repayment will be indexed with CPI so you do pay us back the real cost of that degree.

OK? Sign up to that, and you can go to university.

Fast-forward to 2014 and this new Abbott Liberal/National Coalition government is changing that deal, quite drastically, and after the fact – not just for future students, but anyone with an existing HECS/HELP “debt”:

A new minimum repayment threshold for HELP will be introduced from the 2016‑17 income year (1 July 2016‑30 June 2017). In that year, graduates will commence repaying their HELP debt once their income reaches an estimated $50,638. A 2 per cent repayment rate will apply for those with incomes above this new threshold, up to the existing threshold (estimated to be $56,264 for the 2016-17 income year)…

HELP debts will be indexed by the Treasury 10 year bond rate (to a maximum of 6.0 per cent per annum) rather than the Consumer Price Index (CPI). This means that government is lending money at broadly the same rate it borrows money. The new arrangements will apply to all HELP debts that are subject to indexation on 1 June 2016, regardless of when the debt was incurred and whether the student is still studying or has completed their studies.

Got it? If you have a $100,000 HECS debt, then guess what – you just gained a second “mortgage”. (Well, a debt like a mortgage, only without actually having an asset to cover it.) Would you have borrowed $100,000 if it was going to have interest charged on it? Maybe not, but stiff – this government is changing the rules on you.

You’ll be paying it back as soon as your income hits $50k, considerably less than the current average Australian wage of $74,760.40. Got it? Because this government assumes everyone at University graduates with an above-average wage (serves you right for spending taxpayer money studying a low-paying degree in order to help ordinary Australians, social workers!), it will hit you hard the minute you reach two thirds of the average wage – and if you take a while to get there, don’t worry: your debt will be incurring interest and growing ever more severe with every passing day.

Big gamble for poor people going to university now, isn’t it? Better pick a high-paying degree, or we’re throwing you into a debt trap. (On the much higher fees that universities will now be free to charge.)

But, I suppose – at least students commencing degrees now will get to make the decision, knowing the (ridiculous, prohibitive) cost. The 1.5 million Australians who just got lumped with an interest-bearing debt were never warned when they incurred that debt that any future government would have the unbelievable gall to create a mortgage-sized debt on them out of thin air.

Because that’s what has just happened – unless we somehow stop it.

It’s the perfect storm of unfairness, of inequity, of destruction to the future of Australia. It’s unfair on students now and in the past. It’s inequitable and puts higher education out of the reach of the poor. And it will drive down enrolments in degrees whose graduates might not make a lot of money, but whose contributions to the future of the country are vital.

Is this the worst thing in this most ridiculous and indefensible of budgets, in which the government slashes spending to fund its tax cuts for the rich? Well, maybe not – gouging a huge hole in the safety net so that we are actually saying to Australian citizens “I’m sorry, but if you can’t find a job and don’t have the money to enrol in a course then you’ll just have to starve to death for six months each year” is even worse, let alone imprisoning refugee children on remote islands without any protections, or wrecking universal healthcare to discourage poor people from going to the doctor – but, still. I’ve never heard of the Australian government making a deal with 1.5 million Australians and then sneakily turning it into an interest-bearing debt.

It’s not enough for the ALP to block random measures of this Budget. There’s nothing worth salvaging. The whole thing needs to be thrown out and started again. And no member of this thoroughly untrustworthy, cynically dishonest, class warrior, far-right, society-destroying government deserves to win a seat in an Australian parliament ever again.

UPDATE: Dear easily-confused media. The government is indeed forcing people to pay their HECS “sooner”, but it is completely false to describe the interest issue as just “higher interest”. The issue is that they’re charging interest where people signed up to the scheme being promised to be charged no interest. Yes, it was to be adjusted with CPI – but that’s not in any way interest. CPI just means that the value of the debt is adjusted to take into account inflation. Interest makes the debt bigger for every year you can’t pay it, compounding.

In short: this is charging interest after incurring the debt where it was promised none would be charged before incurring the debt.

]]>https://anonymouslefty.wordpress.com/2014/05/25/abbott-government-creates-interest-incurring-personal-debt-for-1-5-million-australians/feed/14JeremyHECS no interestBudget 2014: setting up for more tax cuts for the rich, funded by grinding the poor into the dusthttps://anonymouslefty.wordpress.com/2014/05/13/budget-2014-setting-up-for-more-tax-cuts-for-the-rich-funded-by-grinding-the-poor-into-the-dust/
https://anonymouslefty.wordpress.com/2014/05/13/budget-2014-setting-up-for-more-tax-cuts-for-the-rich-funded-by-grinding-the-poor-into-the-dust/#commentsTue, 13 May 2014 01:28:30 +0000http://anonymouslefty.wordpress.com/?p=13498Continue reading →]]>How to give a certain class of Australians what they want.

Tony Abbott at tonight’s Daily Telegraph post-budget party

Step 1: Win government, promising that, even though the country’s finances are well-known, you can magically create a “budget surplus” whilst simultaneously cutting taxes, and not cutting spending.

In short –
Times are good: lock in tax cuts.
Tax cuts wreck the budget: lock in service cuts.
Service cuts create a surplus: more tax cuts.
REPEAT

End result: America.

Still, after all, it’s just what Australians want – which is why before the election we had to tell them none of it would happen. Because of how much they support it.

Oh, alright, yes, they’re angry – now, two and a half years out from the next election, when they can’t do anything about it. Sure, we’ve got a lot of votes to buy back in the next two budgets – but with the money we just gouged out of the poor and vulnerable, history indicates we can do it.

Trust us.

]]>https://anonymouslefty.wordpress.com/2014/05/13/budget-2014-setting-up-for-more-tax-cuts-for-the-rich-funded-by-grinding-the-poor-into-the-dust/feed/15JeremyTony Abbott at Daily Tele post-budget partyCarbon tax did ithttps://anonymouslefty.wordpress.com/2014/03/01/carbon-tax-did-it/
https://anonymouslefty.wordpress.com/2014/03/01/carbon-tax-did-it/#commentsFri, 28 Feb 2014 23:39:29 +0000http://anonymouslefty.wordpress.com/?p=13486Continue reading →]]>Hey, stop blaming the Abbott Government for the things falling apart on their watch. It’s not their fault. They’re trying to fix the place, but Labor’s carbon tax makes that impossible. And Labor just refuses to let them repeal the carbon tax and solve all the nation’s problems.

I’m putting up a handy thread here for us all to record shemozzles as they continue to happen under this new adult government so we can remember what could have been saved or fixed if only Labor had voted to repeal the carbon tax. (NOTE: comments including a link to where the people involved in the debacle in question expressly contradict claims the carbon tax had anything to do with it WILL BE DELETED WITH PREJUDICE.)

UPDATE: Companies that have noticed the carbon tax having negligible effect on their business, contrary to the government’s claims, FOR GOD SAKE KEEP THAT TO YOURSELVES. Learn from the story of Qantas and its insolently disobedient board, that made the foolish mistake of contradicting the government and is now unconvincingly scrambling to make it up to them. Don’t let that happen to you. Blame the carbon tax early and often.

]]>https://anonymouslefty.wordpress.com/2014/03/01/carbon-tax-did-it/feed/61JeremyTony Abbott finally says something so obviously against Australia’s interests that media stop covering for him; public turns*https://anonymouslefty.wordpress.com/2014/01/25/tony-abbott-finally-says-something-so-obviously-against-australias-interests-that-media-atop-covering-for-him-public-turns/
https://anonymouslefty.wordpress.com/2014/01/25/tony-abbott-finally-says-something-so-obviously-against-australias-interests-that-media-atop-covering-for-him-public-turns/#commentsFri, 24 Jan 2014 20:24:19 +0000http://anonymouslefty.wordpress.com/?p=13472Continue reading →]]>Even if you have little sympathy for the fellow human beings fleeing persecution and asking for our help, even if you’ve internalised ridiculously misleading and flat-out inaccurate phrases like “illegals”, “queue jumpers”, “country shoppers”, and “non-genuine refugees”… if you’re otherwise a rational Australian you’d realise that a few thousand people on boats could never damage our country as much as a significant deterioration in our relationship with Indonesia, our most populous neighbour.

This new PM, Tony Abbott, ranks that relationship BELOW his obsession with persecuting refugees.

The Oz tries to minimise what that damage might mean, making it sound like just a few meaningless speeches, and the News Ltd tabloids are presently a hotbed of “who do those Indons think they are” macho idiocy – but if you think sensibly for a few moments, you couldn’t possibly dismiss it so cavalierly.

…even if this means enduring significant damage to [our] relationship with Indonesia

As if that’s a pissy second-order issue.

It’s true we’ve done things to piss off the Indonesians before – when we (eventually) stood up for the human rights of the East Timorese (before stabbing them in the back for their precious natural resources); most recently when we tried to prevent animal cruelty to our livestock. But unlike the present case, we were not alone in the former – we were backed by most of the rest of the world. And the latter issue didn’t involve affronts to Indonesian sovereignty. In an Indonesian election year.

This new government we’ve got aren’t “adults”. They’re children playing at being cowboys. And if we let them keep doing it, it’s hard to have confidence it won’t seriously hurt us all.

*Not really, obviously.

]]>https://anonymouslefty.wordpress.com/2014/01/25/tony-abbott-finally-says-something-so-obviously-against-australias-interests-that-media-atop-covering-for-him-public-turns/feed/19Jeremy20140125-071307.jpgLike most conservative Australians, I’m sure we can trust the government to do the right thing without any oversighthttps://anonymouslefty.wordpress.com/2014/01/13/like-most-conservative-australians-im-sure-we-can-trust-the-government-to-do-the-right-thing-without-any-oversight/
https://anonymouslefty.wordpress.com/2014/01/13/like-most-conservative-australians-im-sure-we-can-trust-the-government-to-do-the-right-thing-without-any-oversight/#commentsSun, 12 Jan 2014 21:00:47 +0000http://anonymouslefty.wordpress.com/?p=13469Continue reading →]]>OK, ok. The leftists are out there constantly claiming that we’re doing all sorts of monstrous crap to country-shopping fake-refugees that, in reality, most of us know we’re being far too nice to.

We just know we are. If we weren’t, we’d have heard about it, surely?

And since we know that our treatment of refugees is, if anything, too nice, because otherwise we’d have heard about it, that means that secrecy is fine, since we already know we’re being too nice. If there’s anything we know about governments, it’s that they can be trusted to do the right thing when nobody’s keeping track of them.

Abbott was also questioned by the breakfast TV hosts about whether he was happy with the conditions inside detention centres.

“I am confident that we are running these centres competently and humanely,” replied Abbott.

So shut up about it. Why would the PM declare that the centres were being run “competently” and “humanely” if they weren’t? What’s his motivation to lie? Why must you leftists be so cynical and untrusting of government? If you’re going to be so untrusting, maybe you’re exactly the wrong people to be keeping tabs on what’s happening in these places.

Stop trying to expose things we don’t want to know about because whilst we want our government to do monstrous things to our fellow human beings to drive them away, it’s much harder to endorse cruelty when the details are right in front of us. Stop undermining our carefully-constructed edifice of plausible denial.

The government is NOT doing indefensible things on our behalf. Shut up, it isn’t. And if it turns out later that it was, it’s not our fault – we didn’t know about it. NOBODY TOLD US. Shut up, nobody told us. You did not.